For The Love Of Writing

Finding a pen and paper was one of the major turning points of my life. It’s funny, there was no announcement, no big reveal, I probably just chanced upon a diary lying around while I was crawling on the floor.

My earliest recollection is from when I was about 6 years old I think; I used to draw mountains and flowers and write random words I picked up at school on my mom’s important diaries.

I was about the same age when my mom taught me how to make greeting cards. Draw a little outside, write something heartfelt inside. I loved it so much that it became my pass-time, I’d make cards for no reason.

At 8, I switched schools and went from a humble Montessori school to a big Academy with fancy people and fancier stuff and was a terrified little mess. I’d talk so little that a few teachers thought I was “special”. It was one of those days when I excused myself to go to the restroom and happened to carry my pencil in my pocket. I don’t know why. Maybe I was in a hurry, but I wrote with it on one of the walls of the restroom before going back to class. Gross, why would I do that? I don’t know!! There was no Facebook at the time! I think I just needed an outlet. (Pun)

Age 9; I graduated to writing on gender-neutral public walls. I never wrote anything offensive if you’re wondering, I was a sweet innocent baby. But it was so much more fun. It also garnered better reactions from people. The teachers said I was vandalizing school property. I didn’t care. I loved the animated way their arms moved about and the way the eyes would get bigger, I don’t remember what they’d say, but I think I thought they really enjoyed it. (They probably didn’t) I’m 22 now, but my bedroom wall still reads all the shenanigans I did during Christmas Vacation when I was 11.

At 12, I became best friends with the most intelligent & popular girl in all of 7th grade. (which made me the second most popular. Well third-most if I’m being honest, I was her second-best friend for that year) We were intellectual bookworms who loved to write. Since we also happened to be 12-year-old girls, we formed a “Girls Club” which was a member-only clique and had meetings after lunch where’d we’d gossip and I’d keep the minutes of it in a special book.

She and I used to fight a lot too. And every time we fought, we’d write about our version of the feud and leave it in a very obvious place for the other person to find. I was such a drama queen that one time I wrote two full pages (that’s 4 sides), walked up to the wastebasket, crumpled the pages in plain sight of her-knowing all too well she would come to pick them up- and walked off. 4 sides. What did I even write?? Unbelievable.

At 13, I had a crush. ha ha. I wrote a little about it here and there in my daily journal at the time, nothing crazy. (I think)

But at 14 I fell in love & it was reciprocated which opened the door to a lot of writing and crying for no reason. This was my poetry phase. I wrote poems filled with all the things lovers say. I’ve lost all of them and only one remains with me now, and it makes me laugh and cringe so hard I want to forget I ever penned it.

At 15, I sent my best-friend an e-mail regarding a Mathematics Worksheet, and she replied with something funny. So I wrote back with something funny too. We went back and forth until the topics changed to us acting like reporters, joking about people, and talking about what happened at school in lengthy detail.

I still remember one of them read, “I can’t wait for games period tomorrow!Bye!” Ah, memories.

And then 10th grade came to an end and I took up Mathematics, Physics, and Science for my further studies. This gave me no time to think, dream, or dance. Everyday was just read-and-write. Oh and also, Whatsapp became a thing.

I still made time to write though. During boring Physics classes, on the bus back home after school, free periods…The last few pages of all my notebooks were a golden key into the treasure trove of my mind. Two-liners, made up conversations, song lyrics, sketches of my teachers, designs, poems with no beginning and no end, it had everything. But I also began to have friends from the Humanities stream, who wrote better than me.

I say better because I couldn’t comprehend the feelings they used to describe nor could I think as deeply. They were all Jane Austen’s, Virginia Woolf’s, and Emily Bronte’s, and I was a happy Enid Blyton writing stories for kids. Everything I wrote was simple and lack-luster compared to them. And then their stories and opinions would be picked for publication in books, magazines, and newspapers. They were becoming editors for the school magazine, and I was just....sitting on the sidelines with thick Organic Chemistry Guides… that I had to return to the library in a week.

I think that was the start of my self-doubt. I didn’t think I could make it in the Arts & Humanities stream, not with the amount of talent around me. And because I was struggling to keep up my grades in Science, I knew I had to fall into commerce and business. So that’s what I chose for college.

Did I write then? No, not really. I was way too social to sit down and write; I was always surrounded by people. I wrote on the beach-sand, on car windows when it rained, mirrors after they got misty, helped friends with writing assignments, sometimes a good caption for Instagram, but I lost the bravery it takes to burn a paper down with emotion. I could only muster a few words, a few lines.

So for 2 years, I wrote very little. I was always at the library when I could pull away from my friends after classes, with my head inside a book. But of course, after graduating from college, I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know where my passion lay, what I was good at. Now I know, but back then I never considered writing.

A little of the reason was that I didn’t know if I could make it, but mostly because writing came so easy to me. It was like a part of me, I never saw it as talent, never saw it as something I could capitalize on. I always took it for granted.

And then I found Medium.

I only realized how much I missed writing after starting to read on Medium. Everyone here was a notch above the other, writing fearlessly and sharing their opinions on a variety of topics. And every time I read something inspiring, I wanted to give back. I wanted to be helpful too. I wanted to make people’s lives easier by sharing the things I’ve learned from the amount of self-help I read. So it began.

I started writing again to help others.

It’s funny.

because I ended up helping myself.